I've started to play through this game for the first time. I have nothing on my docket at the moment, & figured I'd see what the anti-fuss is all about. Played PS:Torment, of course. Great. Awesome. Not here abut that. Wanted to see what this "successor" is all about. So far... well not so good. I went in totally blind, I don't like reading up on tutorials or guides before I play a game (but do read reviews, which is why I waited so long to play this):
[mild, early SPOILERS below, fwiw]
The Good...
- I dunno, the way Callistege moves about & is like, "out of phase" & her toon reflects that? That's pretty cool.
The Bad...
- the whole attribute system: like how early on you only get a few points in an attribute & can't Focus yet. I like playing Mages (in this case, Nanos), but my character could barely succeed 20% of the time without spending 1/3 of her Int Pool. At the start. You're not supposed to feel awesome at the start, I get that, but you're also not supposed to feel useless. Or have to rest-spam all the time (still tried to avoid that).
- it'd be OK if my Nano didn't have to spend all her (potential) attack points to navigate dialogue. My companions can't contribute to more than 1 or 2 successes (Base: 10% - use 5 points? 60% yay! and wasted if you fail) before our whole party is just done, which means everyone's useless in combat when we do run into one.
- as illustrated above, dialogue stats use the same resource pool as combat stats!
- the # of companions: 3? screw that. tells me they had no idea how to develop their game & had to impose artificial limitations (which, I get, all games do, but a tiny party calls it out to me). A decent party RPG party game needs 4-5 companions at least. You can disagree of course, but to me, a party is a bunch of people. 4 is not a bunch of people. And especially, when you design a "successor" that has fewer companions than the original, you automatically suck (you hear me, Deadfire?).
- my biggest complaint: the amount of *useless* dialogue you have to wade through. PS:T had a bunch of dialogue, but it was (mostly) relevant to the story. When I'm wading through one of the early quests to solve a murder (Circles in Red) there's a place I have to talk to multiple suspects. It takes forever to hear their whole backstories, which I don't care about &, honestly, even doing it doesn't tell you what you (really) need to know, but you still have to go through it all & like "read their thoughts" & then go present your half-evidence, based on nothing, really. Not that this is the only example, but a "highlight" (lowlight I guess) so far.
- combat: when it happens, is just frikkin' dull - I just keep hitting the same abilities over & over & if I deplete their ability, I go rest, unless I'm in one of the rare kinda-timed quests, in which case, I just rely on items to replenish instead of rest. There's no tactics so far. I just spam some buffs at the start, then spam my best attacks (& maybe have Rhin hide, run, & snipe so no one kills her - I like her - I wanna keep her around). I'm sure it gets interesting in the future, but the first few levels are just dull, dull, dull.
- I get that BG1 was like this - snipe with arrows, *maybe expend a spell*, melee if you have to - but at least I *knew* there was more interesting stuff to come, because I knew the system that underlay it. The early stages whetted my appetite. Here I don't have that. I'm just like "oh, I guess I'll probably get more interesting stuff to do. I dunno. This is still boring, & the non-combat stuff is tedious."
Eh. Maybe it gets more interesting. I doubt it based on the (non-spoiler) reviews I've read. But I'll press on just to see.